


This Roof Keeps Me Dry When the Rain Falls

by shakespearespaz



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: American Civil War AU, Because I can, F/M, Mayhem, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespearespaz/pseuds/shakespearespaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles returns from the front lines to marry his brother's widow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Roof Keeps Me Dry When the Rain Falls

Ben was shot in late July, in an unsolved incident on the outskirts of town. Miles received the telegram in August, drenched in the dust of summer and soot of cannon fire, Private Monroe catching the wrinkled paper as it fell from his hand. Their leave was granted and they returned to the stone house by September, with the crisp auburn blanket of dead leaves covering the familiar sight. Miles realized that it was his house now—their father was dead and mother and Rachel no rights to it.

The riverstone façade still glowed as he approached it, smoke leaking lazily from the life within and Miles wanted nothing more than to let them keep it. Rachel and company—the tiny beings with far too little control and far too wide un-Matheson blue eyes had pursued him endlessly last time he had visited. Charlotte and Daniel were older now, he figured, closer to twelve and nine respectively. And Rachel, Rachel was graceful and striking as always, and though stressed and grieving, the black didn’t stop her from weaving her life more closely to her in the dark of uncertainty.

The remarriage was decided within a fortnight at the coupled persuasion of Rachel’s father and Miles’ unforgiving Matheson loyalty. Her father had not broached the topic with Rachel and Miles gathered from the way her hand would halt when scribbling furiously and remain frozen for minutes, the other mindlessly strangling her blonde curls, that everyone was avoiding any serious discussion with her. Iron ran through her but was growing more brittle as the days grew shorter. Her response when Miles finally sat stiffly by her side in a window seat and told her was underwhelming. A half-nod and long silence greeted the proposal before he removed himself unceremoniously to let her think.

He felt a stranger in his childhood home. The creaky stairs and broken panes were drowned out by Charlotte’s mutilated attempts at war tunes on the upright piano and Daniel’s insistence on flinging his wooden toy train figure across every flat surface. Rachel had already hollered at Miles once already, as he stood unsure in the doorway of the humid kitchen, his eyes locked on her ruddy cheeks trying to guess if they were from the heat or her crying. She’d apologized but it was no matter; she needed help and he and Bass did nothing but take up space. He’d distracted himself by going for firewood, only to realize they’d moved the stack. At least his sparse room remained untouched, but he realized that he would soon no longer be able to take refuge there during the foreign nights. He’d be sharing Rachel’s room.

It made sense. She would lose the house otherwise, her home, her workspace. He had seen the attic space she kept for herself, a hidden haven for a woman with an unacceptable interest in engineering and the natural world. He’d followed her awkwardly up the steep stairs once when she’d asked him to and had found that the cluttered space was her mind manifested. It terrified and enthralled him and for a brief moment he felt like he’d been let in, permitted forbidden access to what occupied his brother’s widow’s non-responsive hours. Miles wondered what he really had to offer her, besides a name and house and steady shot on the battlefield—she outflanked him in so many ways.

They were married before the first snowfall. Married in black, Miles felt only guilt at the anticipation that lurched within him at the touch of white cotton appearing as he fumbled nervously at her dress buttons. The night was haunting, with wind that roared through the trees and knocked overdue acorns against the pane. But she shivered under his touch, cold or nervous he couldn’t tell and he only wrapped his arms around her blankly staring form. He felt her relax and curl comfortably beside him before long, and let his body and his grandmother’s heavy quilt warm her until he heard her breathing grow shallow. The heavy weight against him somehow felt worse, her tears cooling on his skin too intimate and curls fanned across his shoulder too gentle.

He wished Ben were alive more than ever, if only because a part of him began to hope.

The hasty union had been well-timed; by Christmas Rachel was failing fast. Two days before she deserted the still cooling breakfast breads on the table and disappeared into the sharp morning fog for a walk. By the time supper approached, Miles had not seen his wife. He still stopped at the thought of her as his wife, but he left the children in the care of Bass and trudged out in the snow. She rested in a nearby clearing against the skeleton trees, the blue and black of her coat and her unruly golden hair vibrant against muted brown and stark white of winter.

He crouched in front of her, overcoat loose in his thin frame, as she managed to croak out, “Am I insane, Miles?”

“I’m not the one who’s been sitting in the snow all day.”

Her nose was bright red and scrunched a bit when she tried to smile. He imagined that she was frozen solid.

“I can’t be in that house. Charlotte and Daniel and those rooms and Ben being gone. Is that all there is?”

“And me.”

She seemed to mouth “and you” silently, tiny puffs of white escaping from her chapped lips. 

“Please,” he asked, “Come in.” He paused. “Or I _will_ carry you.”

He offered her his hand and she surprised him by sliding her gloved fingers into his.

That night she let him plant soft kisses across her still chilled shoulders, the quilt she wrapped tightly around her body to keep out the night drifting lower. She didn’t quite know how to describe his lips against her skin, distracting and filling. She envisioned herself as soft in his calloused hands, and where he had nicks and scars from battle, she had rounded edges and stretch marks. He spent loving time with each part of her though, even as the candles extinguished themselves and left the worn lovers in the dark.

Rachel was radiant on Christmas, where she was more easily fuelled by chaos than by quiet. Charlotte banged more discordant carols on the piano and Daniel insisted on helping with the cooking and eating in equal measures, underfoot as friends filled their home. The best gift came from Miles—a blank journal, new inkwell and a selection of recent _Scientific American_ issues both he and Bass had chipped in to get her. For the first time it felt like their household, not just a strange mess trying to stitch itself haphazardly together.

The Christmas high did not last long and Daniel contracted scarlet fever before the season was over, his coughing too violent as it rattled his tiny body. Rachel spent a week by his bed before taking another week in her attic, while Miles went away with Charlotte to the city for a time, to keep her safe. Daniel finally broke his fever, only to flush pale and sweaty overnight, and Rachel was on the next inbound train. Miles opened his door to find her grasping a black folder to her chest, rapidly spewing about an obscure scientist and possible cures, but before he could speak Charlotte had wrapped herself around her mother, tawny hair blending with yellow. They returned within the week to find Daniel miraculously sitting upright with an excited grin, although his cough would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Winter seemed to drip endlessly into a liminal not quite spring state and Rachel watched Miles grow restless with cabin fever. The fighting continued without him and he still had a month left of leave. They argued quietly about it in bed and she hoped he wasn’t oblivious to the fact that the prospect of his death scared her desperately. Finally, she dragged him into her attic and dropped a ream of paper in front of him. She’d finished her manuscript on properties of electricity and he was going to help her publish it. She knew that Miles fumbled with words, his mind sharp but not as sharp as his swords, but there was a reason she needed a male Matheson for the second time in her life. 

“R. Matheson. Just let people think it’s you,” she explained, as his brown eyes drifted in loving disbelief from her to the sheets with black scrawl.

“We’ll try, Rachel,” he promised, before he bolted forward and caught her pursing lips between his.

The war ended in April. Rachel wavered silently in the entryway, telegram in hand.  The stairs squeaked in warning, but Miles didn’t see her until she was pulling the book he was attempting to conquer from his hands. Within moments she’d collapsed from relief against him, her damp eyes squashed without preamble against his exposed neck.

“I’m staying right here,” he assured against her curls.

The rest passed wordlessly between them, with his heart pounding relentlessly through his thin shirt against her bosom. Each steady intake together felt the fear dissipate, and the dread melt, and each pound kept the emptiness at bay.

He’d catch her, she knew, and for the first time since a sullen official had pounded on her door on a humid summer’s day, she felt free.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So it’s not perfect and I apologize sincerely that this writer was obsessed with Little Women as a child. I think its influence is quite apparent. And if you're a history buff please don't hurt me (I technically am one too, I was just too lazy to go look up some things and instead just ran with it.)


End file.
